Updated EmulationStation for Windows

sikboy

@f-caruso Do you plan to update your personal build with new features? Or everything new goes into the Github build?

Edit:
Another dumb question, on your personal build. How can I set hotkeys? Most of my emulators use xinput (Xbox 360 Controller), but I want to set hotkeys to save, load, quit... IE. Back+LB = F5 (Save)

dukeblooders

@jero For videos, I copy pasted the plugins folder from jdrassa version (which is not included in fcaruzo version). That should fix your flickering issue

jero

@dukeblooders Yes, that was it. Thank you.

@LiveFastCyYoung I see that you have used the xml, but how to name it and where to locate it?

A Former User

@lilbud said in Updated EmulationStation for Windows:

@LiveFastCyYoung Lets get that menu customization into the official ES on the Pi.

I'd love to screw around with that on my cabinet

Yeah, would love to see this adapted to the official RetroPie ES branch. Would need to have @BuZz or @herb_fargus take a look at this branch and see if any of it is usable upstream.

@jero said in Updated EmulationStation for Windows:

@LiveFastCyYoung I see that you have used the xml, but how to name it and where to locate it?

You put the XML provided by @f-caruso in the theme.xml you are using. I had to include it before the basic, detailed and video views. By placing the code in the theme.xml, you can create separate menu themes for each of your ES themes.

jero

@LiveFastCyYoung

thank you, your information has been perfect for me, this menu is great with this possibility

f.caruso

Hi All,

@PittStone It's always possible to make everything in an exe... The question is : is it useful to make a portable exe in which you force the resolution : The anwser is of course NOT ! One of My laptop is 1366 x 768. My USB key should not run correctly on this machine : not really portable anymore... It works like it is the best : By default it uses your desktop resolution. Why change that ?

About the "Magazine Madness". This seems to be related to the fact I deactivated UI preloading for better launch time. Next version will have an option to activate/deactivate UI preloading or not ( to choose between better load time or less smoother first display ).

@LiveFastCyYoung About the sorting : it is on the way, I started to refactor code in order to remove the useless ( and slow as a metadata ) property "Sortname". It was an unfinished task. It will be corrected soon.

About the menu theming : What I did is compatible with Recalbox menu theming - except icons - I kept their names and property.

@sikboy Didn't understand your first question... To set Hotkeys, you have to launch ES with EmulationStationPortable.exe. You can edit es_padtokey.cfg to add your input. <app name=> is the name of the process the input applies. "*" for every process. <input name=> is the name of the joystick buttons as stored in es_input.cfg. <Input key=> is the name of the System.Windows.Forms.Keys enum to bind ( see https://docs.microsoft.com/fr-fr/dotnet/api/system.windows.forms.keys?view=netframework-4.8 ). You can combine multiple input or keys separating them with space.

About the Retropie ES branch : I know my changes are big.
I do try to make things clean ( not my 1st multiplatform project ) and my version should compile and behave exactly the same on a Pi as on Windows ( except for some menu Options which are only for Windows -> "hide when launching game" is only for windows, or the quit menu is unchanged on a pi ).

If the Retropie ES Team want to take things I did : they are welcome, they can take everything they want. But I don't imagine setting a pull request with all my work...

For my future plans, I hope l'll find time to make multiple gridview modes. The problem is : For some systems I want to display 3d boxes ( portait view ), for some other I want to display screenshots ( lanscape view with outer zooming - minSize - just like tiles in Windows 10 ). Grid is enough customizable to display thoses mode, but not by system. My idea is to allow inheritance from grid ( ex : create a view called "grid.portrait" or "grid.landscape" which inherits everything from grid, but juste changes several ). In the gamelist options, add an option to select prefered grid mode ( by enumerating the theme ).

sikboy

@f-caruso Sorry if I didn't make myself clear, never mind I'll try to figure it out, You are doing an awesome job

LiveFreeDead

@f-caruso said in Updated EmulationStation for Windows:

hide when launching game

With your version of ES whenever I quit a game using a controller button press it doesn't show the menu again, it stays on the loading screen until you tap the keyboard or press a button on the controller once the form is active and sometimes if I have another window open when the game ends it will jump to that and I can not reactivate it at all unless I press alt tab on my keyboard - which means I can't do it from the couch with the controller at all. It did it with your previous version I was testing, the only time i can get it to come back is if I set Power Saving to Disabled - which I am thankful only uses 4 to 5% CPU now thank you, but if you can take a look at forcing form activation and redraw once the calling process has ended (or however it detect Emulator closures). I am loving the latest work ;)

-EDIT-

After a few minutes the CPU drops to 0% - 1% usage, so I will just leave Power saving disabled and that will fix the redraw bug for me for now.

f.caruso

@LiveFreeDead This happens because :
You set "POWER SAVING" to "INSTANT" + "HIDE WHEN RUNNING GAME" to OFF + "GAME LAUNCH TRANSITION" (I created a different transition for game launch) which it is not set to INSTANT (should be done automatically, but it is not). Simply set GAME LAUNCH TRANSITION to INSTANT. Or stop using Power saving...

alberion

Is there a way to start ES on a second monitor and keep it open while working on the other monitor?

im trying to make ES to always open in my tv, while y work on my pc monitor, is that possible?

sikboy

Hey @f-caruso Im trying to trigger this with Redream. What am I doing wrong?

f.caruso

@sikboy Hi, nothing wrong, but not a lot of informations : Do your run emulationstationportable.exe ? if yes, maybe redream is runned as admin while emulationstationportable is not. All processes must run in the same account ( everything as admin, or nothing ) or it will not work.

dukeblooders

Deleted

f.caruso

Hi everyone,

It's been a while... but I want to keep you informed that I released a new version today of my EmulationStation 2.10c fcamod.

This release in mainly focused on having a perfect & animated grid view, theming, and videos, and solving bugs. I also focused on backward compatibility for themes.

The changelog is pretty long. For example : you can now design custom views, inherited from integrated views, and choose which view to apply, either globally or by system. Also, theming system is now fully compatible with Recalbox themes.

You can download and see source code here :
https://github.com/fabricecaruso/EmulationStation/releases

You can also download a complete pack including my theme, which demonstrates all the new possibilities here :
http://fabrice.caruso.free.fr/EmulationStationMod.7z

Also, I made a video to demonstrate the new grid possibilities. I forgot to capture a system with a video background... but it works... Never mind you can test it using "DVD Boxes #2" in my theme. You can see the video here :

I didn't document yet the new Theming possibilities, but, promise, I will soon.

@mitu I archived my code and rebased it. Even if I work under Windows / Visual Studio, my code should compile and work perfectly under Linux & Pi. I saw you validated a MR recently on github, so i'm wondering... Are you interested in merging my work that in the main Retropie repo ? Do you think I should push a MR ? Please contact me if you are interested ( as an admin, you certainly can see my email ).

A Former User

Holy moly that's a lot of progress.

Any chance the alphabetical sorting issue was solved?

f.caruso

@LiveFastCyYoung said in Updated EmulationStation for Windows:

Any chance the alphabetical sorting issue was solved?

It is. Isn't it ?
The video continuing playing when running a game too....

A Former User

@f-caruso I'm not at home so I can't test it until later. I'll certainly report back though. Thanks! :)

PittStone

@f-caruso The "Magazin Madness Theme have now pixelated Covers on Main Menue. After set "preload UI" to off, the pixelate is gone. Please check it out.

mitu

@f-caruso said in Updated EmulationStation for Windows:

https://github.com/fabricecaruso/EmulationStation/releases

Looks like great work !

@mitu I archived my code and rebased it. Even if I work under Windows / Visual Studio, my code should compile and work perfectly under Linux & Pi.

It compiles fine under Linux. Didn't get a chance to do it on a Pi yet.

I saw you validated a MR recently on github, so i'm wondering... Are you interested in merging my work that in the main Retropie repo ? Do you think I should push a MR ? Please contact me if you are interested ( as an admin, you certainly can see my email ).

I'm just a casual contributor to Emulationstation - my PR's have been so far just small bugfixes - I don't have commit rights. @pjft, @jdrassa (which fork you forked) and @Tomaz are the main maintainers of the repository.

As a RetroPie contributor, I think some of your changes could benefit everyone - not just Windows users - and we could gain by adding your changes:

The Grid View changes
L10n is an request voiced here - there's a starting PR by @nadenislamarre, the main Batocera developer and several forks which implemented it.
Windows fixes - a lot of 'orphaned' Emulationstation Win users find their way to this topic, after they realise that emulationstation.org is dormant.
I'm sure there are more small fixes and optimisations in your fork.

For integrating those changes into the main RetroPie version, I still think a series of MR/PR (focused on a certain functionality) is the way to go - but that's up to repo's maintainers. I can certainly test things - both on Linux/PI.

f.caruso

@PittStone I added a mecanism to ensure images are sized in memory to the size of their container. It saves lot of VRAM. Maybe some images are stored in different containers and the sizing is too small. I'll investigate. Maybe l'll also add an option ( deactivated by default ? ) for this mecanim (resize images on/off).